Mai Hibachi

2 out of 5 stars: Stick with the Hibachi here

Mai Hibachi has opened up near Albertson's where a buffet used to be. It is a reasonably priced Hibachi place with sushi and other asian dishes as well. They offer Hibachi dinners starting at $12 for vegetables only up to $45 for all of the meats as well. Lunches are less expensive, and a variety of lunch boxes are available for around $10-12, including salmon teriyaki.

I had a bento box which included sushi rolls, shumai, a steamed dumpling, a salad, and an egg roll. While the dumplings were overly soggyand the salad was wilty, the egg roll had great flavor. The sushi rolls were acceptable size for those included in a box lunch and the fish seemed fresh but the rice was soggy and bland. It had no essence of sugar or vinegar.

I spied some other more substantial rolls coming out of the kitchen and while the prices on rolls (other than plain ones with just fish and rice) range from $7 to $20, you get quite a large amount of slices per roll, double what you'd normally get in a sushi restaurant.

The star at this restaurant is the hibachi. The meat looks tender and tasty. The steak teriyaki was a tender cut that looked like sirloin and my lunch companion enjoyed it. The other bonus of the hibachi side of the restaurant is that you will have less service issues. Our waiter had a hard time understanding my order (though he had no english-language problems) and put in the wrong thing, so I had to wait a while as they fixed the error and brought my lunch box. We could tell our waiter was very new at the field, he had an akward table manner. You can avoid this bad service by sitting on the hibachi side and just dealing predominately with your chef.

If you want to try out Mai Hibachi, I suggest trying out this place for a hibachi lunch before you commit to a full-priced dinner. I might be able to upgrade to 3 stars once I give the hibachi a full shot. Some others from my employer recommended this place.